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JOSEPH FRANK
"faith." "By 1846," he says, "I had been initiated by Belinsky into
the
truth
of this imminent regeneration of the world and of the sanctity
of the future Communist society. All these convictions relating to the
immorality of the most sacred (Christian) institutions of modem
society-the immorality of religion, of the family, the immorality of
the right to property-all these ideas relating to the suppression of
nationalities in the name of universal fraternity, which required one
to despise one's country as an obstacle to evolution, etc., etc., these
were influences that we could not overcome, and which, on the
contrary, took hold of our hearts in the name of I know not what
principle of grandeur." Belinsky is thus given the role of Dostoevsky's
"initiator" into all those doctrines that led to the latter's arrest, im–
prisonment and exile, and whose acceptance followed the rejection
of Christ. "During the last year of his life," Dostoevsky says accurately
enough, "I did not go to see him a single time [Belinsky died in May,
1848].... He had taken a dislike to me, but I was then passionately
following all his teachings."
Certainly the first point to be observed about Dostoevsky's ac–
count is that he could hardly have been as innocent a neophyte as he
pretends with respect to "Socialism." In those days, especially in
Russia, "Socialism" meant little more than a feeling that political
liberty was desirable but insufficient, and that something had to
be
done to redistribute the wealth in favor of the needy and the oppressed.
In this sense Dostoevsky had been a "Socialist" long before he met
Belinsky, as even a cursory glance at
his
first novel,
Poor Folk,
is suf–
ficient to prove. Nor could any reader of George Sand have escaped
learning about the "imminent regeneration of the world" and the
"immorality" of private property, the family, and at least of the
official Church (though not of religion
per se).
If
nothing else, the
attacks on the "Socialism" of contemporary French literature, which
constantly appeared in the Russian reactionary journals, would have
been enough to convey a fairly adequate notion of the main Socialist
tenets. What probably
did
come as a surprise and shock to Dostoevsky,
however, was to find Belinsky
both
a Socialist and a violent atheist at
the same time ("he promptly began with me on atheism").
The reasons for Dostoevsky's consternation on this score are easily
explicable. Utopian Socialism, to be sure, was determinedly anti–
clerical; and it rejected the Christian morality of asceticism, which
